And yet there is a deeper error still at the root of our selfishness and want of sympathy. We do not confess the ground of Christ's own sympathy, of His own sacrifice. He declares to us here that His knowledge of the sheep, and the knowledge which the sheep have of Him, rests upon the Father's knowledge of Him and His knowledge of the Father. He has been telling us the same thing in previous discourses. This union of the Father with the Son,--this dependence of the Son upon the Father,--has been the mystery which the whole Gospel has been discovering to us. Those words, in which He tells us that this relation is at the basis of our relation to Him and to each other,--of all our social and spiritual sympathies,--do but carry us one step further in the revelation. Those words, in which He tells us that He lays down His life for the sheep, because He is one with His Father, do but bring out more fully that love of the Father, of which His life and death were testimonies; a love to which He yielded Himself in simple obedience, when He gave the greatest proof He could give of love to the sheep. This is the answer to the question which was asked before, whether duty to God is not as good and powerful a motive as love to man? Yes, brethren, a more powerful motive, a deeper and safer ground to stand upon, if we accept what our Lord says here. He boasts of no love to man as dwelling in Himself,--it is all derived from His Father. He merely submits to His will, merely fulfils it. And because that will is a will of absolute love, the mere submission to it,--the mere consenting that it should be accomplished upon Him and in Him,--involved the most perfect love to men,--the most entire communion with them,--the dying for them. He says this expressly in the 17th and 18th verses, though there is one interposed between them and that which I last quoted, which it would be shameful indeed to pass over. '_And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father._'